This event will take place in the British Library Knowledge Centre Pigott Theatre. It will be simultaneously live streamed on the British Library platform. Tickets may be booked either to attend in person (physical) or to watch on our platform (online) either live or within 48 hours on catch up. Viewing links for the online version will be sent out in the confirmation email you receive after booking. Captions are available for our online events and most in person events in the Pigott Theatre. If you have specific access requirements please email customer@bl.uk

The Caribbean’s leading literature festival returns to the British Library for an evening of stories, poetry and conversation. Join some of the finest writers and poets from the Caribbean and Britain as they share their work, influences and inspirations.

The evening will consist of two sessions with a short interval.

How Memories Become Poems
19.00 - 20.00

Remembered places, incidents, and relationships are at the heart of recent books by poets Anthony Joseph (Sonnets for Albert), Lawrence Scott (Looking for Cazabon), and Christine Roseeta Walker (Coco Island). How can poems reimagine and transform personal memories? These three books offer a masterclass in the power of verse to transform an achingly specific experience into something powerfully universal. In conversation with Fawzia Muradali Kane.

Echoes in the Blood
20.15 - 21.15

In their most recent books, award-winning authors Kevin Jared Hosein (Hungry Ghosts), Monique Roffey (Passiontide), and Safiya Sinclair (How to Say Babylon) explore how tensions of family and friendship, class and race, gender and spirituality shape both individuals and societies. From Trinidad in the aftermath of World War 2 to Jamaica in the recent past to a fictional island that serves as a microcosm of today's Caribbean, these two novels and one memoir uncover hidden stories that complicate ideas about our region. In conversation with Colin Grant.

Supported by the Hollick Family Foundation and the Eccles Institute for the Americas and Oceania.


How Memories Become Poems
Anthony Joseph is an award-winning Trinidad-born poet, novelist, academic, and musician. His latest poetry collection, Sonnets for Albert, was the winner of the 2023 OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry. It previously won the 2022 T.S. Eliot Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2022 Forward Prize for Best Collection. He is the author of four other poetry collections and three novels.

Lawrence Scott is an award-winning novelist and short story writer from Trinidad and Tobago. His first novel Witchbroom was a BBC Book at Bedtime, while his second novel, Aelred’s Sin, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best Book for Canada and the Caribbean in 1999. Light Falling on Bamboo was shortlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize for Fiction category. He became a fellow of the RSL in 2019. Looking for Cazabon (2024) is his debut book of poems.

Christine Roseeta Walker is a Jamaican poet and novelist whose poetry has appeared in PN Review, Wild Court, The Tangerine Magazine, Bath Magg and the anthology New Poetries VIII (Carcanet, 2021). Her work was also featured on RTÉ Radio 1-The Poetry Programme. She has recently completed her debut novel, The Grass is Weeping, a revenge tragedy set in Jamaica. Her first poetry collection, Coco Island, is published by Carcanet, 2024. She currently lives in Manchester, UK.

Fawzia Muradali Kane is an architect and poet. Born in San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago, she came to the UK on a scholarship to study architecture. She is now based in London and is a director of KMK Architects. Her debut poetry collection Tantie Diablesse (Waterloo Press 2011) was longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry. In 2014, Thamesis Publications produced her long sequence Houses of the Dead as an illustrated pamphlet. Her poem Eric, written in Trini Creole won 2nd prize in the 2024 National Poetry Competition. Her second poetry collection, Guaracara, will be published by Carcanet Press in 2025.


Echoes in the Blood
Kevin Jared Hosein is the author of the novel Hungry Ghosts, winner of the 2024 OCM Bocas Prize for Fiction and the 2024 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. His story Passage won the 2018 Commonwealth Short Story Prize and his young adult novel The Beast of Kikuyo won the Burt Award for Caribbean Literature. The novel The Repenters was shortlisted for the 2017 OCM Bocas Prize for Fiction and the International Dublin Literary Award. He was born, works, and lives in Trinidad.

Monique Roffey was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and lives in London. She is the author of seven novels and a memoir. The Mermaid of Black Conch won the Costa Book of the Year and the Costa Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Goldsmiths Prize. Her other highly acclaimed books include Archipelago, which won the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, The White Woman on the Green Bicycle, and House of Ashes. She is a professor of contemporary fiction at Manchester Metropolitan University. Passiontide is her most recent novel.

Safiya Sinclair, born in Montego Bay, Jamaica, is the author of the memoir How to Say Babylon, winner of the overall 2024 OCM Bocas Prize and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Kirkus Prize, and shortlisted for the Women’s Prize in Nonfiction. She is also the author of the poetry collection Cannibal, winner of a Whiting Writers’ Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Metcalf Award, the OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry, the Phillis Wheatley Book Award, and the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. She now lives in the United States.

Colin Grant’s books include Bageye at the Wheel, short-listed for the Pen Ackerley Prize, and Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush Generation, a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. His latest book is I’m Black So You Don’t Have to Be. His oral history of migration to Britain, What We Leave We Carry, will be published in 2025. Grant is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and director of WritersMosaic, an online magazine and division of the Royal Literary Fund.



Produced in association with Bocas Lit Fest

Doors and Bar open at 18:00. If you’re attending in person, please arrive no later than 15 minutes before the start time of this event.

Half price tickets available for Members, Students, Under 26 and other concession groups. 

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